[kiwih]

Strange question - has the "submitted at" times been edited on this post and all the comments here? I swear I read everything on this submission, including the comments, several days ago, but nothing here is longer than a few hours.

Actually, google search agrees with me - if you search for the title here + hackernews, it says that it saw this post and several of the comments 6 days ago (apologies that I can't link to the cache as this is no longer a feature of Google).

Why are all the post and comment times here saying less than a few hours ago?

[neilv]

Falsifying timestamps is a kludge that HN uses when moderators give a post a second chance to gain traction on the front page.

(Personally, I have a strong aversion to falsifying public information like this, and I hope that they will prioritize implementing this better.)

[gblargg]

This might explain why I see a post, then have trouble finding it the next day. It sounds like it can move around in the order of things.

[neilv]

That might be a different mechanism.

Unlike Reddit, the ordering of HN posts isn't only a function of the numbers of votes, number of comments, and time. Some other moderation activity can cause a front page post to suddenly be buried many pages deep.

[defrost]

It's been second chanced and "shadow time altered" (probably).

          This post number is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45557970
  A post from 7 hours past is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45630962

You can see from the ID number that this post really is much older than seven hours.

( bonus l33tc0d3 qu3est: knock up something to probe and plot posts per unit time, etc. ( I'm taking my dad to the shop instead ) )

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 * https://news.ycombinator.com/pool